I was like any new convert to a philosophy that resonates deeply. So excited to find that the beliefs that had been at the core of my relationship makeup for years actually had a name and was a “thing” and just like a new Christian or a new Vegan I wanted to convince everyone I knew that this was the ultimate way to live!
I’ve learned a lot in the last 4 years. Even then I’m sure I’ve only learned a fraction of what there is to know. As always I’m going to speak only my own truth and firsthand observations and I hope that you will be a discerning reader and read widely on the topic in search for your own truth.
There are two factors which need to combine for a person to live a poly life.
Poly is an orientation
When I was quite young I realised that my heart didn’t follow the conventional pattern of “ one at a time”. My feelings for someone did not die just because theirs did for me, nor did they die when I developed feelings for another. When I was 12 I tried out the notion of having a boyfriend and a secret boyfriend. The secret boyfriend incidentally was the guy that is now my husband ( we’ve known each other since aged 7) but it didn’t last long due to my guilt of it being “wrong “. The experiment was so brief that he doesn’t in fact remember it. I think he might have had a crush on another girl at the time and I found out 40 years later that he’s a one girl kinda guy!
I don’t love very easily, and for the most part I do not initiate love, only return it. Once I do love someone however, that sentiment never seems to go away. I remember saying as early as in my 20’s “If you ever truly loved someone you will love them forever”and getting very strange looks for my comments.
I couldn’t explain it any better than that and no-one, not ONE SINGLE PERSON ever agreed with me.
That was my very first poly inkling and nowadays I have many ways to describe it:
My love for you is like a beam of light from above. It’s like you’re standing in a spotlight. But when I love someone else they are standing in their own beam of light. Yours doesn’t get dimmer, in fact my “sun” is more empowered the more lights I shine as your love feeds back to me. I receive your love with gratitude and return it with enthusiasm
And this:
When you only have one heart, you tend to think everyone else also only has one heart, so when you see someone loving more than one person you picture that one heart broken down into sections and there is less love for each partner.
When I say I love you with my whole heart I literally do. I have a heart with your name on it and it is reserved only for you.But I feel like I have more than one heart!
The more love I receive from you and others the stronger my hearts grow and with it the ability to give love.
In my cluster of hearts love literally gets multiplied, not divided.
The best thing you can do for me is to encourage me to seek as much love as possible as this is how I thrive.
My personal goal is to surround myself with as much love as possible. I had a very rough start to life with too much fear and loneliness and not enough love. I have a beautiful soulmate love with my husband ( nesting partner) but there are corners of my mind which are literally starved, having never seen the light of love and it makes me very sad.
I do not believe that one person should be put under pressure to be “ everything” to another person. I feel that in subscribing to that school of thought we set ourselves up for disappointment over unmet needs. This could be one reason the divorce rate is so high.
I try and surround my husband with as much love as possible because he is also from a very emotionally damaging family. I do not for a minute think that I can single-handedly fill the voids left by all of them.
I am grateful for the love he has for me and I have no intention of contaminating that love with disappointment over needs he cannot possibly meet.
Being polyamorous IS an orientation. I am still polyamorous even when I am only in one relationship in the same way that I am still gay even when I am not in a same sex relationship. It’s simply who I am.
However orientation is not enough to lead a polyamorous life.
Poly has to also be a choice
From what I have observed the last 4 years there are a lot of people whose orientation is at the very least slightly, if not definitely poly. They love multiple parents, children, friends but societal conventions still prohibit the notion of loving more than one partner.
However orientation can only transition to lifestyle when one makes a conscious choice to defy their programming and go against the tide in our hetero-normative monogamous society.
I have observed this over and over again as these are the people who are often attracted to me. They hear about me ( as I lead a transparent life), they seek me out, they get to know me and then inevitably break my heart as they come to the conclusion that “ poly is not for them”.
In some cases I can see this is true but in most cases the truth is that they do not have the courage to make the choice to live according to their orientation.
It’s not really a surprise. In the past there have been many whose orientation has been “gay” who led straight lives because they did not feel that they could choose the life that matched their orientation .
An openly poly life is perceived to be as risky as an openly gay life used to be.
So what holds them back?
The answer is fear, and if you remember back to an earlier article, fear is powered by the possibility of loss.
Loss of family approval, loss of employee approval, loss of being socially “acceptable “, just to name a few.
They then find themselves in a lose / lose situation .
If someone denies their poly orientation, they will lose the potential to partake in a life of loving which fits their true heart (s). They will sentence themselves to a life of limiting love and resenting their one partner over unmet expectations.
I really hate those movies where someone is in love with two people and are forced to choose. If they are in love with two people they are most likely poly. As if they were mono they would have fallen out of love with the first person as soon as they fell in love with the second.
Don’t get me wrong- mono is a valid way to live if it truly matches your orientation.
However if you default to it out of fear then it could be a very lonely road.
We only get one life.
Being true to ourselves is an important factor In determining our happiness.
The Relationships Evolution 